Sangeet Natak Akademi presented a theatre festival, Natya Parva, in Mumbai from 1-16 December 2002 in association with National Centre for performing Arts, Prithvi Theatre, Y.B. Chavan Centre and Ekjute of Mumbai. The shows were held at Tata Theatre, NCPA Experimental Theatre, Y.B. Chavan Centre and Prithvi Theatre.

The event was among the major expositions of contemporary theatre held by the Akademi over the years, presenting before audiences select plays in various languages from various parts of the country. The Akademi's last venture of its kind had been the Nehru Shatabdi Natya Samaroh held in Delhi 1989. While plays - and therefore playwrights were the focus of attention in that event, Natya Parva the focus was on directors. (All the directors represented in the festival were recipients of Sangeet Natak Akademi's awards for theatre since 1985.) The programme included productions based on epic and popular poetry, folklore and contemporary fiction, rendering of classic plays from Indian and foreign sources; and productions based on stories of the directors' own making. A strong engagement with social and political issues was discernible in many of the plays, and in some others a search for a distinctive idiom of theatre was evident.

In addition to other languages, Natya Parva offered a sample theatre in Kashmiri, Dogri, Punjabi, Assamese, and Tamil - not often encountered in All India theatre festivals.

Natya Parva was dedicated to the memory of four eminent personalities in Indian theatre who had passed away in recent months - Shanta Gandhi, Dina Pathak, B.V. Karanth and Manohar Singh.